


Cat's Cradle

by baridalive



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Denial of Feelings, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Gryffindor Mark Lee (NCT), Kitten Mark Lee (NCT), LITERALLY, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan is Whipped, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan-centric, Light Angst, M/M, Magic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Slytherin Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Strangers to Lovers, bed sharing, gratuitous romeo and juliet references at the end, he's a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27619862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baridalive/pseuds/baridalive
Summary: Up until now, Donghyuck has considered his Hogwarts experience to be of the usual sort: pranking the first years, not showing up to class on time, and just being a general nuisance simply because he can.All of that changes when a misfire in a duel turns Head Boy Mark Lee into a kitten and Donghyuck is saddled with dealing with the consequences and cat-sitting until things can be fixed.He just doesn't expect this to cause the most extraordinary week of his life.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 73
Kudos: 1103
Collections: Favorites





	Cat's Cradle

**Author's Note:**

> all i have to say is that the catboy mark agenda made me do it.  
> sentence structure variety is at an all time low but we aren’t talking about that. and yes, the side plot is kind of half baked and not super fleshed out but we’re all here for catboy mark anyway so whatever. i also wrote this from start to finish in like, three sittings.  
> this was supposed to be short and sweet. it certainly isn’t short, but i hope it’s sweet :)  
> [many thanks once again to [val](https://twitter.com/unaaguamala) for putting up with my markhyuck bullshit and cleaning this whole thing up so it's legible!!!]  
> [[another quick shoutout to [lee](https://twitter.com/xingowo) & [chanchan](https://twitter.com/whitenoisce) for supporting my yelling in their dms about this for a few days... it kept me going <3]

For Monday being the uncontested worst day of the week, it’s sure doing a great job of living up to its potential.

Donghyuck overslept and missed breakfast—he isn’t sure if Renjun was being kind or just vindictful when he didn’t wake him up before leaving—and was nearly late to Defense Against the Dark Arts because he misplaced his wand, _and_ nearly tripped over Renjun’s demon cat on his hurry to leave the Slytherin common room.

His tie is hastily done and his robes are wrinkled to high heaven by the time he finally skids into the room. He makes it just as Professor Kim charms the door shut with a flick of his wand. His lips draw together sourly. Donghyuck feels a little swell of dark pride that Doyoung didn’t get to lock him out of the classroom and take off house points for being tardy.

“So good of you to join us, Mr. Lee,” Professor Kim says. “I’m sure that you’d love to go first, then?”

Donghyuck curses Mondays for the fifth time. It’s not even nine in the morning.

“Uh, yeah, yeah,” he says, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. He clears his throat. “What am I going first for?”

Surveying the room, he quickly realizes that was a very stupid thing to ask. There’s a smattering of laughter, but one look from Professor Kim silences the room again. Every student has gathered around a circle drawn on the floor in a chalky, white substance. It’s set up for a duel.

“Mock dueling, Mr. Lee.” A smile curves at his lips. “Wordless spells. I can only assume you spent the weekend studying after this was announced last Friday.”

The words skirt the line between mocking and downright patronizing. Everyone in the class knows that Donghyuck was dozing off in the back of the room last Friday because of the Quidditch match Thursday night and the subsequent victory partying that had gone into the wee hours of the morning. 

He definitely didn’t know this was announced. Donghyuck shoots a glare at a very smug-looking Renjun at the back of the class. Of _course_ Renjun hadn’t told him. It’s probably payback for something scathing Donghyuck said earlier in the week regarding Renjun’s godforsaken cat, but he doesn’t know for sure.

“Well…?” Professor Kim prompts. “You do want to be an Auror, don’t you? This is the kind of thing that you need to be good at.”

Oh, now he’s just _goading._ Donghyuck kisses his teeth and draws his wand, walking into the center of the room where the dueling circle has been set up. He shakes off his robe just before he enters the circle, draping it over the back of a chair. He hates dueling with long sleeves; they always get in the way. The line flares bright as he crosses it and he swallows hard, now sealed inside until the duel is finished. No spells or people will be able to cross that line until a victor has been named.

“So…” Donghyuck loosens his tie and neatly rolls up the sleeves of his button-up.“Who am I facing?” He turns to Professor Kim, who just smiles.

There’s a jostling in the crowd of students on the opposite side of the circle, and people shuffle out of the way to part for a figure striding forward. Donghyuck’s breath gets caught in his throat.

Oh, _shit._

Mark Lee steps over the line, not even blinking as the line flares up, sealing the two of them inside. Donghyuck wants to scoff—he doesn’t even know why he’s surprised.

He doesn’t know a lot about Mark Lee given that he’s a seventh year—and a _Gryffindor_ to boot—and they don’t tend to run in the same circles, but he does know a few things. Mark is Hogwarts’ current golden boy, the perfect prodigy wizard turned Head Boy this year. He spends most of his time in the library helping other students or studying, and Donghyuck has yet to meet a professor who doesn’t sing his praises at least once over the year. In fact, he’s not even technically _in_ Professor Kim’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class this hour, he just drops in most days to help out as a pseudo-teaching assistant. He and Professor Kim are on good enough terms that Mark calls him _Doyoung,_ like what the hell? Not even Headmaster Taeyong calls Professor Kim by his first name out loud. 

Unfortunately for Donghyuck, the other most prominent thing he knows about Mark is that he’s the best dueler that Hogwarts has seen since Byun _freaking_ Baekhyun nearly a decade ago. As current head of the dueling club and rumored aspiring auror himself, Mark measures up to be quite the opponent.

Donghyuck can nearly _feel_ Professor Kim waiting for a reaction, but Donghyuck is determined not to give him one. He just grips his wand a little tighter and meets Mark’s gaze evenly across the dueling space. The Head Boy badge on Mark’s robes winks at him. Donghyuck glares back.

“Alright boys, you know the rules,” Professor Kim announces in monotone, as if he’s not completely emotionally invested in watching Mark take Donghyuck down a peg or two. “Winner will get house points awarded accordingly.”

Mark nods jerkily, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose a bit. Donghyuck has the weird urge to walk over and push them back into place. Shaking that feeling off, he watches curiously as Mark gives him a small smile and starts to reach out to shake Donghyuck’s hand but falters halfway, remembering himself.

Donghyuck hides the smirk tugging at his lips by stooping into a customary pre-duel bow. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Mark panic and do the same, ears turning the same color as his immaculately-done tie. The duel hasn’t even started and Mark’s already disregarding etiquette, which would be concerning if it weren’t so clear that Mark’s just flustered for whatever reason.

“Begin,” Professor Kim commands, and Donghyuck doesn’t waste any time in raising his wand to cast first.

He’s stronger on the offensive, but he knows that Mark is so good at dueling because of his unusually strong defensive—he tires his opponents out by letting them attack for as long as they’d like and deflecting each spell easily before turning around and taking them down with just a few curses of his own, catching them off guard.

Donghyuck isn’t entirely sure how he knows this, but he has the sneaking suspicion it has to do with the time he joined the dueling club for a month last year only to get kicked out when he “took things too seriously against a first year” or something. He still doesn’t understand, but it’s in the past.

Mark ceaselessly blocks each spell Donghyuck throws at him, occasionally casting a few of his own in return, but there’s a little wrinkle between his brows and a bead of sweat at his temple. Donghyuck grins; he might actually tire Mark out enough that he can slip a curse in behind his defenses.

Flashes of light surround them, fizzling out when they hit the invisible barrier. There’s muffled cheering from the rest of the class but Donghyuck blocks it all out as he and Mark continue to circle each other, analyzing footwork and wand movements.

It’s the most fun that Donghyuck has had in a duel in a long time, as much as he hates to admit it. Mark’s the first person he’s faced who’s on his level, not too far above or too far below. 

But this isn’t about _fun._ This has house points on the line, and Donghyuck will be damned if he lets Gryffindor get the lead again after their three week long neck-and-neck streak with Slytherin.

Donghyuck has a moment of pure clarity, spotting a place Mark leaves open in his defense: the shoulder of his dominant arm. He zeroes in on it, and Mark notices just before Donghyuck can flick his wand. In a moment of obvious panic, Mark casts his own spell at the same time Donghyuck does, and the bolts of red and white light from their respective wands connect in mid-air.

The white overtakes the red, and Mark’s eyes go wide as the two spells come tumbling back at him. Donghyuck swears very loudly as they connect with Mark, smack in the middle of his chest, and everything explodes into pink dust. There’s faint shouting from outside the barrier: cheering, if Donghyuck had to guess, because of the hit.

Donghyuck chokes on the magic-dense air, turning away to shield himself from the worst of it. The line on the ground pulses with light once and the barrier falls down. A winner has emerged, and since Donghyuck can feel his white-knuckled grip around his own wand, that means Mark must’ve forfeited his.

He coughs again, blinking hard as he opens his eyes and turns back around with the intention of boasting to Professor Kim, but when he sees the professor’s face, as white as a sheet, staring at the empty space where Mark should be, he gasps.

The room is silent.

Mark is gone. Probably dead, exploded into a pygmy-puff-pink smoke bomb that Donghyuck just inhaled a good portion of. He has a dead boy in his lungs. Does that make him a cannibal, or—

“P-professor?” Shotaro stutters from where he’s standing next to him. “Did Donghyuck just kill Mark?”

Professor Kim doesn’t grace him with a response, left stunned and sufficiently unable to form comprehensible words, let alone move.

The dust has settled, the air is no longer rosy-hued. Mark is still gone. All that’s left of him is a pile of clothes on the ground, the red-and-gold striped tie still in a neat windsor knot, Head Boy badge gleaming in the sunlight it catches.

Donghyuck’s breath catches in his throat.

“Did I just become an accessory to murder?” Yangyang whispers from behind Donghyuck. A resounding thwack shuts him up, presumably thanks to Renjun.

No one knows what to do and Doyoung looks like he’s about to faint, so he won’t be of much help. Unfortunately, Mark would usually be the next best option if something were to go wrong, but seeing as his disappearance—and possible death—is the _source_ of the problem, that leaves Donghyuck in charge. No one may really like to admit it, not even Donghyuck himself, but he’s probably the next best wizard in that room.

Swallowing the knot in his throat, he pockets his wand and shuffles forward to nudge the pile of clothes with his toe. It shifts a bit, like it’s supposed to.

Then it shifts again. Donghyuck didn’t touch it.

The robes give another wiggle, and some girl off to the side gasps.

“You shrunk Mark?” Yeri hisses. “Donghyuck, do you even _know_ how to do that?”

Numbly, Donghyuck shakes his head, crouching down in front of the clothes, watching a little lump underneath wriggle around. The classroom erupts into murmurs for a moment, but Doyoung finally moves, holding a hand up to signal for silence.

In that moment, a sound can be heard: the tiniest of meows.

Donghyuck falls backward, barely catching himself on his hands as a tiny head pokes out of the perfectly starched collar of Mark’s shirt. It's the head of a little black kitten, eyes wide and pink tongue rolling over gleaming white teeth.

It meows again, and then catches sight of itself on the reflective surface of Mark’s head boy badge, and freaks out. It trips over itself in its craze to run away, but it only succeeds in tangling itself in Mark’s robes, little limbs waving in the air as it struggles to right itself again.

“By Merlin…” Renjun says, disbelieving. Donghyuck can almost picture the smile slowly spreading on his face. “You turned Mark Lee into a cat.”

Donghyuck honestly thinks he would rather have killed him.

✧

“Headmaster, with all due respect, what the hell do you mean I have to fix this?” Donghyuck throws his hands up in the air. Taeyong just watches him patiently from behind his half moon spectacles on the other side of his desk, chin resting in the palm of his hand. “It wasn’t my fault!”

At least Mark doesn’t look particularly happy about it either. He’s paused his anxious pacing on the windowsill of Headmaster Taeyong’s office to look at them with as much apprehension as a kitten can muster—which is a substantial amount, apparently.

“You’re failing Transfiguration, are you not?” Taeyong points out, not unkindly. Donghyuck still winces, and by the way Mark’s ears twitch in their direction, he heard it, too.

“What does that have to do with this?”

“Consider it an extra credit project.” 

Mark meows in protest. As much as Donghyuck hates to say it, he agrees with the fuzzy little bastard.

“You’re counting another student’s _life_ as extra credit?” Donghyuck asks, incredulous. “I don’t even know the guy, but that doesn’t mean I want him to be subjected to my clearly less than stellar Transfiguration skills.”

Mark turns to face out the window, pawing at the ground.

“Mr. Lee will be just fine,” Taeyong assures, sitting up straight to beckon Mark over. Mark leaps from the windowsill to pause carefully on the edge of Taeyong’s desk. Taeyong reaches forward to scratch behind his ears, and the subsequent purr he emits is surprisingly loud for his small size. “He’s in good hands.”

Donghyuck sighs. “Can’t you just undo it? I don’t even know where to start.”

Mark nudges forlornly at Taeyong’s wand, watching it roll a bit along the desk. Twelve inches, cypress, unicorn hair core. It doesn’t differ that much from Donghyuck’s own thirteen-inch of cypress and dragon heartstring. It makes sense, given their shared lineage, but it makes him resent Taeyong just a little bit more. The first Slytherin Headmaster in nearly a century, and a young one at that. Donghyuck would never measure up in the eyes of their family.

Donghyuck’s eyes are drawn to the other side of the room to a small side table, where Mark’s clothes now sit, neatly folded, Head Boy badge resting next to his wand on top. Twelve inches. Poplar wood, by the looks of it. He wonders what core it might possess.

“I certainly could, but I won’t.” Taeyong strokes Mark’s head gently, snapping Donghyuck’s attention back to them. 

“And why not?” Donghyuck puts a hand on his hip, but immediately feels ridiculous when Taeyong lowers his gaze at him over the top of his spectacles. He lets his hand fall limply to his side. If cats could snicker, he’s sure that’s what Mark is doing.

“I feel as though this is a bonding exercise that might do you two some good.” There’s a twinkle in Taeyong’s eye when he says it that makes Donghyuck shift his weight, uncomfortable. Taeyong always seems to know something Donghyuck doesn’t, and it pisses him off to no end—it has ever since they were kids.

“Alright, fine,” Donghyuck concedes, throwing his hands up. “I agree, I’ll try. What now?”

“Well, Mark has to run a dueling club meeting next week this time, and I’m sure it would be much more effective to teach as a human, yes?”

“So I have a week to figure this out. Got it.” Donghyuck crosses his arms. “Anything else?”

Taeyong hums, tilting his head as his lean fingers continue to stroke Mark’s dark fur. “You’ll be taking care of Mark in the meantime.” Mark physically startles under Taeyong’s touch, back arching in what Donghyuck can only interpret as fear.

“What—?”

“I simply can’t have students running around unattended, no matter what form they’re in.” Taeyong looks down at Mark fondly, a look Donghyuck hasn’t seen in a long time. “Yes, even if they’re technically Head Boy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he groans.

“It’s all set, don’t worry.” Taeyong claps his hands together. “I’ve exempted Mark from all classes and work this week so you don’t have to worry about accompanying him there instead of furthering your own education.”

“Taeyong, come _on—”_

The headmaster doesn’t pay his protests any attention. He simply stands to retrieve Mark’s things and hands them to Donghyuck with a little pat on the head. “Carry him back to the Slytherin common room, wouldn’t you? I’d rather not have one of my brightest students stepped on.”

Donghyuck purses his lips, giving Taeyong a curt nod before marching straight out of his office. Barely making sure Mark makes it out too, he shuts the door behind them, leaving the two of them alone at the top of the spiral staircase leading to Taeyong’s office.

Donghyuck glares down at Mark.

“I am _not_ going to be carrying you.”

Mark just blinks back up at him.

✧

Donghyuck grumbles to himself as he cradles Mark’s little body to his chest with two hands, nestled amongst his human clothes, protecting him from the other students that bump and jostle them in the busy halls.

Mark purrs, curling into a ball in the folds of his robes.

Donghyuck scoffs, but continues on.

✧

“Ground rules,” Donghyuck declares, staring Mark down. The cat is currently perched on the edge of his desk. “I like my personal space, so don’t touch my shit and stay in your designated area.”

Mark tilts his head and looks around the room, clearly asking what exactly his “designated area” is. With an exasperated flick of his wand, a silver line draws itself onto the floor, sectioning off the barest corner of Donghyuck’s side of the room. 

“This is you. Now stay.”

With visible reluctance, Mark hops off the desk and across the line. He glances back over his shoulder at Donghyuck unnervingly. Mark’s eyes as a cat and his eyes as a human are eerily similar. Donghyuck doesn’t really want to think about when he noticed what Mark’s eyes looked like.

They spend the rest of the day on their respective sides of the room. Donghyuck takes the time to flip through every textbook he has on Transfiguration to try and get at least an inkling of where to begin. By the time the sun has set and Donghyuck’s eyes are drooping, no progress has been made, and he can barely muster the strength to get changed before slipping into bed.

Mark turns around when he does, like the true gentleman the rumors make him out to be, and only looks back after a few minutes to eye the unused pillow next to Donghyuck’s head for an extended moment. With a sigh, Donghyuck tosses it over into Mark’s little corner, listening to Mark let out this delighted little purr as he circles around it before finally curling up in the center.

Donghyuck has to turn over to stop staring at Mark’s tiny form on the white pillow. He’s determined to get some shut-eye tonight and hopefully wake up from this awful dream.

✧

Tuesday arrives.

It wasn’t all just a bad dream.

Donghyuck wakes up to a prodding at his face. Disoriented and exhausted, he opens his eyes to see the face of a regretfully familiar black kitten staring down at him. 

He very nearly screams.

The only reason he doesn’t kick Mark out right then and there is because his nuisance might allow enough time to steal a cinnamon roll from the Great Hall before having to make it to class on time. He dresses for the day as Mark stares at the wall resolutely. It’s kind of endearing until Donghyuck realizes that he was just watching Mark instead of paying attention to what he was doing and bangs his toe into the doorframe.

Mark squeaks in what Donghyuck can only presume is laughter. Between that and Donghyuck’s rather loud cursing as he hops around on one foot, clutching the other, he’s pretty sure the entirety of Slytherin house is awake and ready to murder him. The only nice thing is that nothing’s new there.

Just as Donghyuck finds himself ready to leave the common room—and _on time_ for once—he realizes he’s lost his pint-sized shadow. He scours the room, refusing to call out for him in fear of some other student actually deciding that they’ve had enough of Donghyuck and erupting out of their room to hex him or something. 

He finds Mark just outside of Renjun’s slightly ajar door, in an intense battle with Renjun’s cat Montague. Montague is at least double Mark’s size in both weight and height, and Donghyuck can’t say he’s surprised when Mark is pinned beneath the smug-looking tabby cat.

“You absolute demon,” Donghyuck hisses, picking Montague up off of Mark. “You’re just like your owner, you know that?”

Montague licks a paw, clearly fully aware of this and very proud. Renjun constantly has the same “holier-than-thou” air about him, and Donghyuck’s glad that he’s found his match in the form of a slightly overweight, prick of a cat.

Donghyuck loathes Renjun almost as much as he loathes his cat. Renjun has the leg up only for being fun to argue with.

Mark rights himself, scampering away from Montague to hide behind Donghyuck’s ankles as he shoos the second devil incarnate back into the first devil incarnate’s room and closes the door. He heaves a sigh, resting against it as he looks down at Mark meaningfully.

“I hate that thing,” he says. “Renjun named it ‘Montague’ of all things, and they’re responsible for most of the destroyed upholstery in my room back home.” He grimaces, still remembering having to explain to his livid parents what happened because he couldn’t use magic outside of school yet to repair it behind their backs. “I hate cats.”

Mark meows, indignant, batting at Donghyuck’s foot with one tiny paw.

“Yes, even you.” He sticks his tongue out at Mark before pushing off the door and leading Mark back to his own room. “In you go. I’ll be back after class.”

Mark plops down in the middle of the hallway next to Donghyuck’s foot, cocking his head to the side as if he doesn’t understand. He does, he’s just being a little shit and they both know it.

“I’m not letting you come to class with me, so don’t even try it,” Donghyuck warns, leveling him with the iciest glare he can manage.

Mark’s tail curls around Donghyuck’s ankle coyly.

✧

Donghyuck finds his desk space to be severely limited when he has a cat stretched across it.

He also finds that it’s a lot more difficult to pretend to take notes—Donghyuck would be the first to tell you that he never actually _does—_ when there’s a cat pawing at his fingertips, goading him to stroke that one little spot behind his ears that he seems to like so much. 

Granted, Donghyuck does have to stop petting him when his purring grows loud enough to warrant a pointed clearing of the throat from Professor Qian.

“Just because you don’t enjoy my class doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly ‘bring your pet to school day,’ Mr. Lee,” Professor Qian scolds, cocking a hip to rest it against his desk, looking every bit as teacher-ly as he possibly can. The sweater vest and wire-rimmed spectacles only help the look.

Mark hisses at the word ‘pet,’ arching away from Donghyuck’s touch to stand up and face Professor Qian.

“Mark, don’t—” Donghyuck starts, watching as the muscles in Mark’s hindquarters tense up, coiled to release at any moment.

“Continued interruptions of the lecture will not be helping your dismal grade, either,” Professor Qian chimes. Donghyuck sinks low in his seat, feeling pink paint his cheeks. He’s so distracted by his embarrassment that he can’t stop Mark from jumping off of the desk and trotting over to Professor Qian’s feet. “Oh, hello, there.”

He reaches down to stroke Mark’s glossy fur, but Mark dodges, instead leaping up just high enough to snatch the chalk from between the professor’s fingers. Chalk firmly clamped between his tiny fangs, Donghyuck watches in a mix of mild horror and great amusement as Mark manages to get himself up onto the ledge of the blackboard to correct not one, not two, but _three separate errors_ in Professor Qian’s writing.

Donghyuck can almost feel the hot air deflating out of the professor’s pride as Mark saunters back to him, drops the chalk nub at his feet, and returns to the surface of Donghyuck’s desk: curled up and purring once more. Granted, the errors might’ve been due to the distractions, but being able to see the professor that hates him most be taken off his pedestal stands as one of the greatest moments of Donghyuck’s life.

If he could give Mark a solid fist bump, he would. But as it stands, he can’t, so he settles for stroking that sensitive little space just behind his ears again.

When Professor Qian collects himself and continues on with the lesson, albeit a bit shakily, he doesn’t say another word about Donghyuck. Mark, clearly feeling very proud of himself, looks to Donghyuck for validation. He tilts his head to the side and bares his small teeth in the vague form of a smile. Donghyuck just flicks his nose and then continues petting him, doing a rather terrible job of hiding his smile.

Within the span of the class period, Mark has earned himself a reputation as the most interesting thing to happen in Hogwarts since the fifth year mistletoe incident that even resident prankster Donghyuck winces at when it crosses his mind. 

He doesn’t know how, but by the time Professor Qian dismisses Transfiguration, there’s a bit of a crowd outside the door, all waiting to see the kitten that managed to outsmart the most qualified professor that Taeyong has on his staff.

Donghyuck can’t even get up from his desk before he’s nearly swarmed, and Mark’s rather unceremoniously jolted from his nap by the grabbing hands of curious students.

“So it’s really true, then?” someone asks from off to the side, and Donghyuck turns around to find himself face to face—well, face to _chest—_ with someone big and broad and wearing a bright yellow tie. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s Wong Yukhei; he’s a little hard to miss, and has made it his personal goal to be friends with everyone in Hogwarts, including Donghyuck. So far, he’s been successful, which is commendable. “That’s really Mark?”

Donghyuck nods, unsure of how else to respond.

“Oh, _awesome!”_ he cries, clapping his hands together with glee. “No one really believed the rumor at first, but after he didn’t show up for breakfast, and now after this…” Yukhei chuckles. “There’s no one else who could ever get away with that, besides maybe you, Donghyuck.”

“Thanks?” Donghyuck scratches the back of his neck, feeling his cheeks heat up from all of the prying eyes on him.

“Hey, I was wondering,” Yukhei starts, a little hesitant all of a sudden. Donghyuck notes the distinct pinkness to the tips of his ears that wasn’t there before. “Would you wanna go with me to Hogsmeade this weekend?”

“Yukhei, I—” Donghyuck doesn’t get the chance to reply because he suddenly has an armful of hissing kitten to deal with. He sighs, adjusting Mark in his arms as he looks back up at Yukhei. “I’m sorry, but I have some things to take care of this weekend. Maybe next time?”

Yukhei grins back at him. “Next time. Sounds like a plan.”

Hands reach in from the sides to try and pet Mark, but he just buries himself in Donghyuck’s robes to hide, shying away from all the attention. Yukhei looks like he wants to scold some of the students but doesn’t know how to without hurting their feelings. Typical Hufflepuff. Donghyuck blows a wisp of hair out of his face as he shoulders his bookbag, keeping Mark protected under one arm.

“He’s still a human, you know,” Donghyuck chastises, loud enough for everyone in the immediate area to freeze. “He may not look like it, but he’s still Mark. He’s not just some object for you to marvel over and touch as you please. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he’s uncomfortable. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another class to get to.”

The students around them—mostly Gryffindors, now that Donghyuck takes a look at the overwhelming majority of red ties and he scoffs because aren't these supposed to be Mark’s _friends?—_ look shocked. He isn’t sure if the reaction is from Mark choosing to seek refuge with a Slytherin over any of them, let alone Donghyuck himself, or if it’s just because Donghyuck demonstrated an actual desire to attend a class for the first time since his arrival at Hogwarts.

Something must tip them off to how pissed off Donghyuck is, because the crowd easily parts in front of Yukhei as he leads them out before bidding the two of them goodbye at the door. Mark graces Yukhei with a small meow and a dart of his pink tongue against the pad of Yukhei’s thumb before they part ways.

As Donghyuck starts off, Mark carefully maneuvers his way over Donghyuck’s robes to tuck himself into the crook of his neck, resting his tail gently across the nape of it.

It makes Donghyuck shiver, but he doesn’t move Mark away.

✧

During lunch in the Great Hall, Mark laps lazily at a bowl of chocolate milk, acting much more like a kitten than a human at this point. Donghyuck’s hand never leaves the back of Mark’s head, scratching there gently throughout the meal.

Renjun shoots him a weird look from across the table.

Donghyuck drops his fork to flip him off, feeling Mark purr beneath his fingertips.

Renjun just shakes his head and goes back to burying his nose in his latest bad romance novel but there’s a peculiar shine in his eyes that’s impossible to miss when he peeks over the pages to glance between the two. Donghyuck wonders what it means.

✧

In Care of Magical Creatures, Mark spends most of the lesson relaxed on the back of a thestral, his tail swinging back and forth as he rests his head in his paws and watches the lesson from afar. Donghyuck has been able to see thestrals ever since he was a child, and it makes him wonder what death Mark has seen to warrant him being able to see them, too.

About halfway through the class, Professor “Just Call Me Johnny, Please” Suh ends up with an unsolicited feline friend perched on his head, batting at the small pixies that had been set loose temporarily for demonstration purposes.

The rest of the hour is spent chasing Mark all over the grounds as he tries to hunt down the runaway pixies that Johnny couldn’t quite catch in time. It proves to be one of the most exciting days of class Donghyuck has gone to in quite a while. Both he and Mark earn a standing invitation from Johnny to come down and hunt pixies with him any time.

Donghyuck doesn’t realize until he’s in bed that night that this may be the first time he’s ever been on good terms with a professor, and it’s all because of Mark. He falls asleep after failing to force down the smile that he knows is overtaking his cheeks.

✧

Wednesday and Thursday come and go with more of the same and some increasing popularity for Mark among the Slytherins—who didn’t _dislike_ him to begin with, but certainly weren’t keen about having another goody-two-shoes Gryffindor Head Boy—and for Donghyuck among every other house.

The antics the two of them manage to get up to both inside and outside of the classroom has been the talk of the castle for the past few days, which includes but is not limited to: befriending the grumpiest painting in the castle, accidentally setting Taeyong’s phoenix free in the Great Hall, joining the Headless Hunt with the ghosts despite neither of them being headless, and setting Professor Moon’s telescope on fire. The last one may or may not have actually been an accident, but something about the very self-satisfied look on Mark’s soot-covered face tells Donghyuck that he knows more than he’ll ever let on.

They’ve been so busy screwing around that Donghyuck manages to forget all about having to turn Mark back into a human at some point. It’s not like Mark seemed keen on reminding him either.

✧

Donghyuck doesn’t even realize how badly the week has been wearing on him, despite all the fun, until he falls asleep writing a Transfiguration essay on Wednesday night after a long and grueling Quidditch practice. Granted, as Captain, he was the one mostly responsible for making it long and grueling, but the cloudy weather and wind weren’t helping much either.

He wakes up to a gentle scratching sound and an unprecedented, fuzzy warmth surrounding him. Blinking his eyes open slowly, he takes in his surroundings but doesn’t move. 

The first thing he sees is Mark on the table by the dying fireplace, writing—or, doing the closest thing to writing he can manage. He has Donghyuck’s quill clamped between his tiny teeth, head tilted sideways to keep the tip of the quill pressed to the parchment as he squiggles out letters as best he can. It’s not stellar penmanship by a longshot, but it’s legible.

Still on the couch in the middle of the common room, a familiar blanket has been haphazardly dragged over him, and he’s very confused as to exactly how it got there, because Mark isn’t big enough to carry something like this, and there’s no way Renjun would help.

He doesn’t understand until he feels the gentle vibrations, a purred inhale and exhale pressing in and out on his stomach.

Montague is nestled beneath the blanket, curled up on the warmth of Donghyuck’s torso, claws secured to his favorite Holyhead Harpies sweatshirt. A bleary squint in Mark’s direction reveals the little tufts of green caught in his paws that match the fabric of the blanket.

He grins, closing his eyes for a moment.

Mark must’ve convinced Montague to help him haul the rather hefty flannel blanket all the way from Donghyuck’s room, down the stairs and to the couch in the common room. Donghyuck peeks over to Mark again to see him tracking ink across the parchment with his little paws because he stepped in a bit of fresh writing without noticing.

His heart presses against his lungs, making it hard to breathe for a second. He doesn’t know why, and it’s a little terrifying.

✧

Giving a squirming Mark a bath in the washroom sink is a lot harder than it sounds, but Donghyuck needs to get all the ink off of him. It ends with Donghyuck being nearly drenched, Renjun also being decently soaked, and a very disgruntled, damp Montague sulking around the dormitory hallways.

“He’s a menace.” Renjun leans back to whisper to Donghyuck, but the words don’t carry any weight because of the fond way he’s drying Mark off with his fluffiest towel. “He also looks like a drowned rat,” he points out affectionately, squishing the kitten’s cheeks between his thumbs.

Mark bats him away, looking up at Donghyuck for help. Donghyuck, still soaked from Mark’s belatedly successful bathtime, just shrugs, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom. As far as he’s concerned, Mark can fend for himself right now. Donghyuck’s only job is to fend off the curious first and second years that try to poke their head in and see Mark.

Montague pokes their head into the room between Donghyuck’s leg and the doorframe, and Donghyuck takes that as his cue to leave. After changing into some decidedly less wet clothes, he reads over the essay that he’d brought to his desk before forcing Mark to take a bath.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting from Mark the kitten, but it reads the same as if it were written by Mark the Really Smart Human. For the first time in his life, Transfiguration makes more than a lick of sense, and it’s a shame it comes in the form of something he’s going to pretend is his own essay. It’s funny, because who would’ve thought Golden Boy Mark Lee would be doing someone else’s homework? Certainly not Donghyuck, that’s for sure.

He picks up his quill to add a few more lines at the bottom, something that sounds a little more like _him_ writing it because otherwise Professor Qian would surely pick up on the disparity. A tap of his wand against the parchment cleans the handwriting—teethwriting?—right up.

A meow from the doorway makes Donghyuck look over to see Mark standing there, fur looking decently frazzled but otherwise alright. 

“You coming to class again today?” he asks, crouching down and holding out a hand for Mark to hop onto. Mark makes a sound of agreement and takes the lift before slipping into Donghyuck’s bag, nestling himself down amongst the books so just his head pokes out above the edge. Donghyuck tucks his essay away in the bag right next to Mark. “Keep it safe for me, yeah?”

Donghyuck strokes the top of his head as he heads out the door. 

✧

For the first time in his life, Donghyuck gets a good grade on a Transfiguration essay. Mark takes one look at the red inked _Outstanding_ at the top of the parchment and nods resolutely, stomping his little paw in pride.

Donghyuck laughs a little, breathless and unbelieving.

“He might be doing you some good, Mr. Lee,” Professor Qian says before walking away to hand the next student their essay.

Donghyuck is sure that if Mark could be smiling right now, he would be.

✧

Mark spends Donghyuck’s Charms lesson stretched out in the sliver of sun that falls across Donghyuck’s desk perfectly. He’s spread out on it completely, from corner to corner, and Donghyuck doesn’t have the heart to move him.

He’ll just “borrow” the notes from someone else again.

Or Mark can teach him, since he clearly seems to know so much.

It _is_ funny how Mark, even as a cat, clearly wants to answer the questions that Professor Jung asks the class. He even looks tempted to call on Mark at some points because clearly no one else is paying attention, not when it’s such a beautiful Friday afternoon and there’s a Quidditch match this evening.

He does, once, call on Mark, possibly expecting another chalk stunt like the infamous one he pulled with Professor Qian earlier in the week. Instead, all he gets is Mark meowing very loudly, gesturing vaguely with one of his paws, before going straight back to sleep. The entire room erupts in laughter, and Professor Jung can’t quiet them down for the rest of the period. Donghyuck sees Mark crack an eye open to survey the damage he’s caused before seemingly deeming it worthy and dozing off once more.

✧

“You know,” Donghyuck starts, glancing at Mark on his shoulder as he walks them to the Great Hall for lunch, “I’m not gonna keep bringing you to class if you’re just gonna sleep through it.”

Mark’s mouth curls into a smile and winds his tail around the back of Donghyuck’s neck: something he’s gotten in the habit of doing. They both know Donghyuck doesn’t mean a word of it, though.

From the conversations with Yukhei—which are a new and surprisingly pleasant common occurrence—this is the first time in quite a while that Mark has gotten to rest. He’s temporarily exempted from all his classwork and Head Boy duties and just gets to _nap._

Maybe it’s just because in cat form, Donghyuck can’t see the dark circles that always seemed to hang beneath his eyes or the permanent wrinkle between his brows, but he seems more… content now.

Before all this, he’d seen Mark around the halls and through the windows of the library he swore he’d never set foot in and although he usually looked happy, the sheer exhaustion that hung around him was undeniable.

Donghyuck chuckles a little to himself, remembering the couple of days last year where Mark had apparently worked himself so hard he was put on strict bedrest, and how it threw half the castle into a frenzy.

No one quite knew just how much Mark was involved in until suddenly he wasn’t there anymore. Donghyuck remembers being outside Taeyong’s office, wanting to talk to him about some recent family business, when he’d overheard a conversation between his brother and Mark; how Taeyong had to nearly force Mark to drop some things for the sake of his health, how he knew Mark was taking energy potions just to make it through the day sometimes. Taeyong had told him that his body’s natural limits could only be staved off for so long without dire consequences, and that if Mark continued on like this, there was no telling if he’d be able to fully recover again. Donghyuck had left then, not bothering to hear the rest as he clutched the letter from their parents in a white-knuckled grip.

✧

It’s a bit of an interesting situation when the mail comes on Friday. Mark’s owl doesn’t recognize him at first and instead drops Mark’s parcel on the head of Lee Jeno from Gryffindor because Mark used to sit next to him at every meal. Poor Jeno ends up face first in his soup, and he looks embarrassed enough when he wipes himself off that even Donghyuck feels a twinge of sympathy for the guy.

In the time that it takes Donghyuck to go over and collect the package from a rather tomato-y Jeno, Donghyuck’s own letter gets delivered to his usual spot and Renjun takes the liberty of snooping.

“Who’s this from?” Renjun waves the crisp, white envelope sealed with dark green wax on the back. There’s no return address, just Donghyuck’s name written in gleaming silver ink. His heart sinks. “A secret lover? What happened to that boy from Beauxbatons?”

“Xiaojun and I were never a thing, you know this,” Donghyuck hisses, snatching the letter from Renjun’s taunting grip. He looks up just in time to see a snowy owl heading back out the same way it had entered, and it confirms his fears. Dawn never really liked hanging around Hogwarts for longer than she had to, and she certainly didn’t like spending any time at all around Donghyuck.

He can feel Taeyong’s worried gaze on him from where he’s sitting at the professors’ table without even looking up. 

“I’m heading back to my room,” Donghyuck says, tucking his letter into his robes. “Take Mark and his parcel back with you when you’re done, please, Renjun?”

Without another word, he turns on his heel and leaves the hall, sensing Taeyong’s and Mark’s eyes follow him until he rounds the corner and disappears from sight.

✧

It’s Friday evening and Fridays mean Quidditch, but for the first time ever since coming to Hogwarts, Donghyuck misses a game.

It’s not _his_ game, so it doesn’t matter as much. Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff. It’s supposed to be a close match. Normally, he’d like to observe the players and talk strategy with his chasers, Renjun and Yeri, searching for weaknesses in the offense and gaps they leave in defense. Those cracks are where Slytherin is good at sneaking through to take back the advantage—and the Quaffle.

Everyone was saying it would be an interesting match, with Hufflepuff using their formidable beast of a keeper—Wong Yukhei, naturally—to face off against Ravenclaw’s new, shiny, secret weapon: Na Jaemin. He hadn’t joined the team until this year, and apparently stunned everyone in tryouts. Donghyuck had been eager to see him on the pitch, but it looks like that would have to wait another few weeks.

Unfortunately, just because Mark is exempted from his schoolwork this week doesn’t mean that Donghyuck is, and he finds himself sitting in front of the roaring fireplace in the common room, reading through a Transfiguration textbook long after everyone else has gone to sleep. Given the letter that he just read from his oh-so-loving parents, he needs to improve his grades if he doesn’t want to be publicly shamed by them when he goes home for the holidays this year—and that’s if he even gets _invited_ home this year. 

All in all, he’s just in a sour mood, and it’s not helping him absorb any of the information he’s reading over. He’s highly considering throwing the textbook in the fire when a paw nudges his ankle, rucking up the bottom of the sweatpants he’d changed into after his dramatic exit from the Great Hall earlier. He doesn’t even remember Mark or Renjun coming back in earlier, but he was probably too absorbed in wallowing in his own self hatred and pity to look up when they did.

Donghyuck puts down his book, marking it with a spare piece of fabric.

“Hey,” he greets with a yawn. He checks his watch to see that it’s nearing midnight. “Why are you still up this late?”

Mark nudges at Donghyuck’s ink-stained fingers, worming his way under Donghyuck’s arm until he’s pressed flush up against Donghyuck’s side. For a while, he doesn’t do much of anything, to the point where Donghyuck thinks he’s fallen asleep like that, curled up under the warm line of his forearm.

Then he jots something down in his notes, and Mark wriggles out of his grasp to pounce on the quill before he can finish the line.

“What?” Donghyuck sighs, exasperated. “Mark, now is really not the time to mess around.”

Mark looks back at him, adamantly shaking his head. He opens his mouth and points into it.

“You’re hungry?” Donghyuck asks. Mark shakes his head again, pointing to Donghyuck’s quill, then to his mouth. “Oh, you want to write something?”

Mark’s eyes light up and he nods. Reluctantly, Donghyuck slips the shaft of the quill between Mark’s little fangs and lets him run wild over the parchment as he watches over every scratch and scribble Mark makes.

“Wait why are you crossing out that whole section— _Mark! You can’t vandalize a library book like this!”_ Donghyuck hisses, picking Mark up off of where he’d begun to cross out things in the textbook. Mark squirms in his grip, looking at Donghyuck as if to say, _since when do you care?_

“Oh my— you know what? Fine.” He plops Mark back down, quill still clamped in his mouth. “Go nuts. But I’m throwing you under the bus if Sicheng gets mad at me for this.”

Mark sends him a glare, but the narrowed eyes are softened by the way his tail curls and uncurls excitedly behind him. Donghyuck raises his hands in defense, crossing his arms as he watches Mark get back to work.

Even as a kitten, he still manages to have a kind of unparalleled intellect. Renjun might strangle him for saying that, but it’s true. He spends the next hour pointing out errors in Donghyuck’s work with deliberate flicks of ink and rather pretentious swishes of his tail.

Despite how irritating it is, it helps. Mark proves himself to be better than any tutor Donghyuck has ever had, and teaches him a month’s worth of Transfiguration lessons in just a little while, all without saying a damn word.

It’s nice, really. It’s the first time in a long time that Donghyuck’s felt truly _safe_ with someone, and when they’ve exhausted themselves on Professor Qian’s topics, they move seamlessly onto looking for information about Mark’s counterspell. Mark curls up in Donghyuck’s lap, reading along with him in the book perched on Donghyuck’s thighs. It’s not only an escape from the political soap opera that his family has become, but it’s an escape from the dark recesses of his own mind that threaten to swallow him whole some days.

The sun is nearly rising by the time Donghyuck closes the book, and Mark is barely able to keep his eyes open. He didn’t even notice how much time had gone by.

“I really need to turn you back into a human, don’t I?” Donghyuck murmurs, running his thumb over the back of Mark’s neck, feeling the notches in his spine catch as he traces the line of it down to the base of Mark’s tail.

Mark hesitates, but nods.

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck breathes. “I’ve been so selfish with you. We’ll figure out how to fix you tomorrow, okay? I promise.”

Mark just purrs, snuggling up beneath Donghyuck’s chin to paw at his jaw affectionately. Donghyuck barely manages to get them both back to his room, textbooks in tow, before falling asleep still clutching Mark close. 

✧

The breakthrough for Mark’s counterspell doesn’t come until late that afternoon. They both slept through most of the morning after staying up so late, and Donghyuck remembers that warm feeling in his lungs when he woke up to a still-snoozing Mark, tucked on his chest beneath the blankets. He looked at peace, tiny ribs moving in and out with each deep breath, tail coiled loosely around Donghyuck’s pinkie finger.

It’s nearly noon by the time they both finally get out of bed and make the journey across the castle to the library. Mark leads him to a sunny corner of the place, a nook between shelves that Donghyuck would’ve completely missed if he hadn’t been following a guide. They sit there, surrounded by books in a warm cranny of the library on a Saturday, poring over page after page of material.

Before this week, Donghyuck never would’ve imagined willingly being here. He’d normally rather be out practicing Quidditch right now, or pranking the first years with Renjun and Yeri, but maybe that isn’t the case anymore.

Mark’s prowling through the pages of a particularly thick book, nudging Donghyuck’s hand every time he needs the page turned, while Donghyuck hacks away at another one, scouring for any mention of a spell that might help them. Choosing to divide and conquer so they can cover more ground faster is proving to be the right thing to do, because just after the clock strikes six, signaling the start of dinner, Mark makes an almost human noise of surprise and nips and Donghyuck’s pinkie so he looks over.

“What is it— oh…”

Donghyuck sees the section that Mark’s jumping around so excitedly about. The spell doesn’t look too complicated, and neither does the wandwork, but the issue ever since the beginning is that Donghyuck is _wretched_ at Transfiguration, and that may very well be their downfall here.

He sucks in a breath and pulls out a scrap piece of fabric to mark the page, then closes the book and tucks it under his arm. 

“I’ll practice later, but I’m starving.” Donghyuck stretches, and something in his back pops as he stands. “Ready, my liege?”

Mark meows in agreement, hopping from the table to the crook of Donghyuck’s elbow, resting on top of the heavy book. Donghyuck laughs gently, stroking Mark’s head as they head off together.

✧

Donghyuck goes to bed that night with Mark curled up next to his head on the pillow, close enough that Mark’s little exhales ripple through Donghyuck’s hair gently.

He wonders if now, with the solution so close in front of him, does he actually want to take it?

Sleep doesn’t come easily.

✧

Donghyuck is pretty sure he could perform the counterspell in a coma if he needed to. His forearm aches and he feels a headache coming on, but he’s sure he has it down, and that’s what matters.

He kneels in front of his bed, eye level with Mark.

“If I screw it up and I make you become a cat on the inside too, somehow, please know that I’m sorry in advance.”

Mark just makes this weird huffing sound and affectionately bumps Donghyuck’s hand with his nose. Donghyuck scratches behind Mark’s ear, leaning forward to press a kiss to his forehead in a spur of the moment decision, before straightening up and backing away to give himself some space.

He goes through the motions of the spell once more, just in case. Mark nods from the bed, satisfied, as he checks it with the yellowing page of the library book. He looks back up at Donghyuck, expectant. There’s no sense in delaying it any longer.

He clears his throat and says the spell.

With a flick of his wand, a green bolt of light shoots out and smacks Mark so hard that his little body topples over on the sheets, a distressed and slightly strangled meow forced out of him on the way down.

Immediately, Donghyuck covers his face with his hands, only daring to peek through his fingers once a few seconds go by and he hears the bed creak.

A leg.

There’s a leg.

_There’s a distinctly naked, human leg dangling off of Donghyuck’s bed what the hell._

Donghyuck squeaks, setting his wand on the windowsill so he doesn’t break it out of anxiety.

“Mark…?” he tries gently, taking a hesitant step forward.

There’s a groan from the bed, and slowly but surely, Mark Lee sits up straight in all his bare human glory. The sheets are artfully—and also luckily—thrown over his lap to protect his modesty, for which Donghyuck is very grateful.

“Ow,” he grumbles, running a hand through his silky, dark hair. Donghyuck kind of wants to touch it, but now is very much not the time. Mark freezes at the sound of his own voice, and covers his mouth with a hand. “Ow?” he tries again before laughing, incredulous.

Mark runs his hands across his face and arms, inspects his hands.

“It worked?” he whispers. Donghyuck wishes he’d sound a little less _surprised_ that it worked, but all other sentient thought leaves his mind when Mark meets his gaze and he positively lights up. “Donghyuck! It worked, I’m human again! Aha!”

“And so it would seem…” Donghyuck can’t stop his eyes from dragging across Mark’s torso, gaze outlining each surprisingly defined muscle beneath sparsely freckled skin.

Mark pauses, a frown overtaking his face. “I can’t see you. I forgot I need my glasses as a human.” He sighs, falling backwards onto Donghyuck’s bed, _still naked, if he may add._ “I think I miss being a cat already.”

“I don’t think I could turn you back into one even if I tried,” Donghyuck explains, finally tearing his eyes away from Mark for long enough to scour out Mark’s things. It’s been less than a week and he’s already forgotten where he put them.

Leaving Mark on his own to marvel at his own human body—which Donghyuck can’t really blame him for, not when he looks like _that—_ he eventually finds the little stack of Mark’s possessions on the side of his desk. He scoops them up and gingerly walks back to the foot of his bed to place them down on the mussed-up sheets, carefully making sure that his clothes, badge, wand, and glasses are all still there.

It takes every ounce of his willpower to deliberately keep his eyes above Mark’s—bare!—waist. Mark, unbeknownst to Donghyuck’s little gay struggle, grins up in his direction, face a little flushed but eyes bright.

“Thanks, Hyuck. I think this week is the most fun I’ve had in quite a while.”

Donghyuck can’t even find his voice to agree.

✧

“So,” Taeyong starts, stroking the head of his phoenix after a long and rather painful silence. He looks tired, a little more worn down since the last time they spoke. “You turned him back.”

“I did, no thanks to you,” Donghyuck replies, stealing a liquorice snap from the bowl on Taeyong’s desk, watching him closely.

“What now?” The headmaster glosses over the bitter undertone in Donghyuck’s reply.

“What do you mean?”

Taeyong sighs, turning to face him. “What now with you and Mark? Where do things go with you two from here?”

Donghyuck freezes, his third liquorice snap halfway to his mouth. “What’s it to you?”

He gestures vaguely, taking a seat on the arm of his chair. “Humor me.”

Donghyuck shrugs, popping the candy into his mouth. “Things go back to the way they were, I suppose. What did you expect?”

Taeyong sighs, taking off his spectacles to pinch the bridge of his nose. The dark circles are more obvious like this. “Forgive yourself, Donghyuck.”

“For what?” Donghyuck asks, confused.

“For everything,” Taeyong says. “For everything that our parents have blamed you for, for everything you’re trying to escape, for the mistakes you made so long ago. Let yourself be _happy_ for once, and there’s no time I’ve seen you happier than when you were with Mark.”

“Taeyong, you know our parents—”

“Our parents cannot control you here,” Taeyong declares, slamming a hand down on his desk. “I won’t let them. You know how hard I worked to escape their grasp. They can’t touch you if you’re here with me.”

“He’s a _Muggleborn Gryffindor,_ Taeyong!” Donghyuck cries. “I’ll be ostracized from the family! At least Johnny’s a pureblood, that’s the only reason they haven’t erased your existence from the family tree yet.”

“Since when does something as menial as _blood status_ matter to you?”

“It doesn’t! I just—” Donghyuck grips at his hair, frustrated and conflicted. “I couldn’t give less of a damn if he was a halfblood _centaur._ That’s not the point. I’ve just been the family disappointment for _so long,_ Taeyong. It just feels like I’m playing the exact cards they’ve always expected me to. For as much as I hate them… they’re still _family,_ Yong.”

Twin exhales. Taeyong runs his fingers through his phoenix’s feathers thoughtfully. “You have a year and a half left before you don’t have to be part of _that_ family any longer. Family doesn’t have to be blood, but I’ll personally sponsor you in whatever you need. I just—” He takes a deep breath. “I just can’t sit idle and watch you suffer under their thumb for as long as I did. Take your happiness and _run,_ Donghyuck. Run far away. They can’t catch you.”

“Okay,” Donghyuck breathes, fingers gripping the edge of the desk with every ounce of strength he possesses. “Okay. I’ll try.”

Taeyong gives him a watery smile. “And that’s all I’d ever ask from you.”

✧

Weirdly enough, Mark and Donghyuck don’t immediately go back to treating each other like strangers like the reality Donghyuck had originally resigned himself to. 

Sure, he feels a little nervous about entering the Great Hall alone for the first time in a week, no more feline friend to keep him company on this dreary Monday morning. He forgot how long the walk from the Slytherin dormitories to the Great Hall was until he didn’t have someone to talk to along the way. It leaves a bitter taste coating the back of his throat.

In time for breakfast, he saunters into the hall and is immediately spotted by Mark, waving him over from the Gryffindor table. He looks bright and excited and still human, which is something Donghyuck is going to have to adjust to. One glance toward the Slytherin side of the hall gives him the sight of Renjun pointedly jerking his head back at Mark, knowing grin spread wide over his face.

Donghyuck holds up a finger to Mark, indicating that he’ll be just a moment. Mark falters, looking a bit confused, but Donghyuck shoots him the most placating smile he can as he walks over to Renjun and whacks him over the head with his DADA textbook to stop him from snickering.

Looping all the way around the side of the room, he finally slides into the deliberately empty seat on the bench of the Gryffindor table right next to Mark. He’s greeted by Mark’s shy smile and a lot of silence from everyone else. The entire table full of Gryffindors just _looks_ at him, some of them even going so far as to glare—but most of those are from people Donghyuck’s pretty sure he’s hexed before, so it makes sense.

“Hey, Mark?” he whispers. “I don’t think your friends like me too much.” 

“Haha, what?” Mark laughs, nervous. “No, no, I’m sure they like you just fine, _right guys?”_

He turns to the rest of the table, voice rather pointed and edging on hysteria. If Donghyuck didn’t feel so bad, he might laugh.

“Right…” Jeno, sitting a couple places down across the table, gives Mark a long, skeptical look before holding out his hand for Donghyuck to shake. “I’m Jeno, sixth year. We met when this oaf had his parcel dropped on me.”

“Hey!” Mark protests. “It wasn’t my fault!” Everyone ignores him.

“Ah, tomato boy, I remember,” Donghyuck greets, shaking his hand. He considers himself lucky that Jeno takes the comment in good humor. “You clean up nice.”

“Thanks, you look better without all that cat hair on you, too,” Jeno shoots back. Donghyuck matches his grin.

A lot of names pour in after that, some of which Donghyuck recognizes but most of which he doesn’t. He shakes a lot of hands, gets offered lots of money to take care of pets—all of which he refuses—and unofficially gets re-inducted into the dueling club after he recounts the story of turning Mark into a cat in the first place.

“You… _beat_ Mark?” Sungchan asks, eager and incredulous. “No one’s done that in ages!”

“Wait, _that’s_ how it happened?” Jeno drops his spoon. “I thought it was a misfire!”

Donghyuck takes a smug sip of pumpkin juice. “Nah, I won, fair and square. Mark dropped his wand first.”

“That’s because I was a _cat,_ Donghyuck!” Mark tries to defend himself. 

Ryujin hums next to Donghyuck, sticking her fork into a pancake contemplatively. “Can you turn him back into one? I kinda liked it better around here without him. Much less whiny.”

The whole table rumbles in agreement at first, then in laughter at Mark’s subsequent sputtering embarrassment. Donghyuck puts a hand on the back of Mark’s neck, stroking at the soft hairs there, hoping it’s enough to let him know that this is all in good fun. It does the trick, and he relaxes into the touch as Donghyuck strokes the side of his neck with his thumb.

He’s reasonably sure that if Mark could still purr, he would right now.

And within the span of one breakfast, Donghyuck wins over the hearts of the entire Gryffindor House, Mark sitting at his side the entire time with his palm resting hot and comforting on his knee, never once straying.

✧

A month later, Donghyuck gets a cat. A black one, yet to be named, and still tiny enough to fit in his cupped palms.

“Donghyuck.” Renjun stares at him, disbelieving as he approaches the table with his newly acquired ball of fur. “You hate cats,” he states, clearly at a loss of words.

“Maybe I had a change of heart,” he retorts, sitting down and grabbing a cinnamon roll to munch on. He’s halfway through it before realizing Renjun’s still staring at him. “What.” 

“By fucking Merlin,” Renjun breathes. “Mark Lee really _is_ a miracle worker.”

“What does Mark have to do with this?” Donghyuck asks, taking another bite of his roll. 

Renjun raises an eyebrow. Donghyuck looks around to his fellow Slytherins for help, but only receives deadpan looks in return. He shrinks into his seat, holding his kitten a bit closer. She whines, pawing at his chest.

“Look, I just need someone to defend me against Montague.”

“Montague would _look_ at that little one and she’d be a pancake on the wall, Donghyuck, we all know that” Jaemin points at her with his fork, making that one face he specifically reserves for especially small first years and all animals he encounters, blue tie complementing his freshly bleached hair a little too well. “No matter how adorable she may be.”

“I think you just got her because you’re lonely,” Jeno says sagely, stealing a sausage off of Jaemin’s plate to offer up to the kitten, who chomps down on the end of it heartily.

Merlin knows why Jeno and Jaemin have gone to sitting with the Slytherins most of the time now—only further encouraging the inter-house mingling at mealtimes that Yukhei started, Donghyuck accidentally popularized, and those two continue to encourage—but they both seem to have taken a particular liking to Renjun.

Donghyuck couldn’t tell anyone _why_ if they were threatening him with a _cruciatus_ curse, but it gets Renjun’s nose out of those awful books and into the real world, so Donghyuck won’t complain too much.

“How can he be lonely when he’s around Mark all the time?” Yukhei asks, obnoxiously long arm reaching across Donghyuck’s plate to scratch the kitten behind the ears. She squirms and purrs, not unlike the way Mark used to. Donghyuck looks up from her to see everyone staring at him again, sharing the same knowing smile, but Donghyuck clearly doesn’t know what they know and it’s irritating him to no end.

_“What?!”_

“He’s a fucking goner,” Jaemin muses, chin steepled in his hands. “Man, just look at his _smile.”_

Donghyuck immediately drops into a scowl. “Fuck you guys.”

“Oh! Oh!” Yeri claps her hands together. “He’s not denying it this time! This might be progress!”

Donghyuck flips them off and stands up, wiping his fingers on Jeno’s robes for good measure. Jeno doesn’t even notice at first, too absorbed in cooing at the kitten, who honestly just looks at Jeno like he’s crazy.

“Where are you off to?” Renjun asks. “We were gonna practice a bit tonight with the Gryffs. Open pitch, apparently.”

“Mark’s.”

The wolf whistles and teasing hollars follow him all the way out of the Great Hall. Donghyuck, red in the face from embarrassment and kitten cradled securely in his arms, swears on every bone in his body that he hates all of his friends.

✧

Mark takes to the kitten immediately, barely even welcoming Donghyuck into the Gryffindor common room before sweeping the little furball up into his arms and giving her pets and kisses, the latter of which Donghyuck finds himself particularly jealous of.

“Oh, she’s just so precious!” Mark coos, rubbing his nose against hers, making her meow and press a tiny paw to his cheek. He melts so quickly it’s almost despicable.

As he fawns over his new friend, Donghyuck looks around with a lip between his teeth. Taking in the state of the room, Donghyuck gets a little worried. There are study materials everywhere, and he _knows_ he hasn’t seen Mark down in the hall for a meal yet today.

“Don’t get on my case,” Mark starts, already following his train of thought. “I’ve been eating snacks, and I slept a full six hours last night.”

“Oh, six hours,” Donghyuck grumbles, nudging a pile of Astronomy textbooks with his toe ruefully. “Is that a new record or something?”

“Hyuck, c’mon,” Mark whines. “I’ve been doing better.”

“I’m just worried,” Donghyuck admits aloud, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last.

Mark sets the kitten down on his bed and stands in front of Donghyuck, one hand on his shoulder and the other nudging his chin up so he’s forced to meet Mark’s eyes. Mark’s stupidly pretty, wide, sparkly, brown eyes. Shit.

“I’m okay. As long as you’re here, I’m doing okay.”

Donghyuck sighs, resting his cheek against Mark’s cool palm. “Okay.”

“Great!” Mark lights up, switching from serious to playful so fast Donghyuck nearly gets whiplash. “Now what are you gonna name her?” He walks back over to the kitten who’s currently trying to bury herself in Mark’s blankets and pulls her out so she can walk into Mark’s hoodie pocket and rest there, just her little ears and tail poking out either side of the pouch.

“I don’t know yet.” Donghyuck shrugs, sitting down on the floor to look at Mark’s potions notes, which are abysmal at best. He picks up a quill and starts making corrections. “Why do you think I came to you?”

“Aw, I’m touched,” Mark teases, seating himself next to Donghyuck so he can watch the corrections he makes. Potions was never Mark’s strongest subject, but it comes to Donghyuck like breathing. “You gonna name her after me?”

Donghyuck nearly snaps the quill in two. _“What?”_

“What?” Mark looks at him oddly. “She kinda looks like I did, that’s all.”

The kitten sneaks out of Mark’s hoodie pocket and feels her way around to a more comfortable spot, which happens to be smack in the middle of Mark’s lap. She curls up there, rendering Mark immobile while she dozes off. It’s only now that he realizes Mark is wearing one of _his_ sweatshirts. It has a Slytherin logo on it, and Lee emblazoned on the sleeve along with his Quidditch number. When did Mark even get that? And why does he look so good in green?

“Well, I definitely wouldn’t,” Donghyuck simpers, shaking his head to both emphasize his point and rid himself of the thought of Mark in _his_ sweatshirt before he continues his corrections. “She chases off Montague better than you ever could,” he lies between his teeth.

“Then just name her Capulet,” Mark offers, like it’s that easy. It might be, but only because it’s Mark making the suggestion.

“Why?”

“What do you mean ‘why?’” Mark looks at him for a long moment. Whatever Mark’s trying to get him to understand, he’s not getting it. “No, no, Hyuck, don’t tell me you don’t know Romeo and Juliet.” He looks so disappointed, and Donghyuck feels his cheeks go pink.

“What’s that?” he asks quietly.

Mark shakes his head, inciting an impressive amount of shame into Donghyuck. “I need to educate you on this.” He very carefully picks the kitten up and deposits her on Donghyuck’s lap so he can get up and move around his room, rooting through drawers and shelves until he finally produces a small, but thick, book. “I’m surprised Renjun never told you about this. I’m sure he’s read it.”

“You know damn well I ignore most of what Renjun says,” Donghyuck says. Mark shrugs.

“Fair.” He seats himself down on the bed and pats the space next to him. “I keep forgetting that you’re a pureblood and you don’t get a lot of the common experiences that Muggleborns do.”

“Not my fault,” Donghyuck sniffs, loosening his tie as he plops down on the duvet beside Mark, pressing their shoulders together.

“I know,” Mark assures, patting his thigh. “That’s why you have me here. I’ll teach you.”

“You teach me enough as is,” Donghyuck snorts, letting the kitten acclimate to the new position.

“Yeah, and you’re dragging my ass through Advanced Potions. What’s your point?”

Donghyuck just taps the cover of the battered old book. “My point is read. I want to know all about your non-magic secrets.”

“All in time, young Padawan.”

“What’s a Padawan?”

“Oh my God— okay, that’s for another time,” Mark says, opening the book to the first page. “One new thing at a time here. Let’s take it slow.”

Donghyuck hums, pushing Mark’s glasses up the bridge of his nose before resting his head on Mark’s shoulder. Homework long forgotten, Mark reads to Donghyuck late into the night. They end up with Donghyuck’s legs slung over Mark’s lap, his head still planted on Mark’s shoulder so he can read along with the weird language, Capulet curled up in the almost nonexistent space between them.

✧

Turns out that Mark the kitten and Mark the human boyfriend aren’t all that different.

Mark still loves having fingers carded gently through his hair, and he still helps Donghyuck with his Transfiguration work—although significantly more vocally now. They still sleep in the same bed, but now it usually involves one of them sneaking around after hours, and Donghyuck catches Mark napping in the warm sun filtering through the library windows more than once.

But there are some distinct differences.

Like the way Mark holds Donghyuck’s hand to class instead of riding on his shoulder, like how he corrects Professor Qian out loud instead of stealing his chalk.

Like how Mark’s kisses go from affectionate nuzzles of a damp, pink nose on a hand to hot and consuming mouth-to-mouth things that leave Donghyuck panting and breathless, usually pressed up against the nearest vertical surface.

Sometimes, it’s less intense, though. Mark’s chaste pecks before he rushes off to class, the soft morning kisses exchanged when they wake up next to each other, the goodnight forehead kisses, that one time Mark pulled Donghyuck under this mistletoe before they left for Christmas break and kissed him so gently Donghyuck swore he floated away.

Donghyuck convinces the Head Boy to do some rule breaking, and Mark serves as Donghyuck’s general moral compass, stopping him from doing things that might be a step too far. Sometimes they compromise, meet in the middle, but manage to get in trouble anyway because that’s what Donghyuck _does._

“Shush, Mark,” Donghyuck clamps a hand over his mouth, giggling. “Someone’s gonna hear if you keep being that loud.”

“It’s not _my_ fault you— _shit, Hyuck,”_ Mark cuts himself off with a gasp as Donghyuck sucks another bruise along the column of his throat, hands grappling for purchase on Donghyuck’s robes. “You’re a menace,” Mark groans, resting his head back against the wall of the hallway, only the gleam of his eyes visible in the shadows. 

“You like it,” Donghyuck points out with a shrug, tracing the fresh bruise with a delicate finger.

“Irrelevant,” Mark complains.

Donghyuck opens his mouth to reply, only to immediately have Mark press a finger to his lips. _Footsteps,_ he mouths. Donghyuck can hear them too, light and steady, but approaching fast. There’s no good way for them to escape. Mark just winks at him, looping his arms around his shoulders and pulling him close. Donghyuck winds his arms around Mark’s waist and they wait there in the shadows, pressed together, barely daring to breathe.

The footsteps approach, and Donghyuck can hear the frantic beating of Mark’s heart. The footsteps pause just past them, but Donghyuck doesn’t dare turn his head to see who it is.

“Students should be in bed by this hour,” a lilting voice muses, seemingly to themself. Taeyong. “I do hope the last stragglers will be on their way soon.”

It’s a warning. He knows they’re there, but of course he does. Taeyong knows everything.

Donghyuck pulls back from Mark, giggling as he grabs his boyfriend’s hand.

“C’mon, Markie,” he teases, grinning. “It’s time to get in bed.” He lets his voice drop just a little bit, letting the suggestiveness of his words flow in full force.

Mark flushes bright red, and Donghyuck can see in Taeyong’s side profile that he’s halfway between smiling and popping a vein.

The two of them escape down the hallway, still laughing, and if he and Mark stop another six times on the way back to Mark’s room just to make out against walls—and one time against a rather disgruntled painting of an old groundskeeper who told them off—then that’s their own business.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, renjun uses they/them pronouns with montague bc renjun doesn’t wanna gender his cat when they don’t have a say in it and i love that for him.  
> scenes not included that should’ve been: donghyuck taking kitten!mark for a ride on his broom for the first time, hyuck having to open kitten!mark’s parcel for him and it’s a bunch of goodies from his family, mark confessing to hyuck in professor kim’s classroom and hyuck kissing him silly until doyoung catches them and kicks them out, hyuck & mark walking in on renjun recreating The Balcony Scene with montague and capulet (and proceeding to never let him live it down), donghyuck teaching human!mark the rules of quidditch so he can follow along with the games and know when to cheer for his seeker boyfriend :(
> 
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